Epiphanies and Shit

Most of the people that read my blog are also friends on Facebook, so I don't have to talk to you about the emotional hell my week has been as I started my new job. Lots and lots of panic attacks all around, and a crippling fear of failure has gripped me all week, but most of you know that already, so moving on...

Today, my wife and I had to go shopping, but we stopped at a coney island because a) We had no food in the house (hence the need to go grocery shopping), and b) a coney island was all we could afford.

While we headed to the restaurant, I felt the same familiar feelings hitting my body once again.

Crippling fear. Anxiety. Feelings of impending doom. The fight or flight response.

Yep, I'm having a panic attack. Again. Just one of many this week.

For those that are friends of mine on Facebook, I've told you in detail about the panic attacks this week. I would sit in my classroom training for my new job, and I kept having an emotional response that said:

"You're gonna fail. You're gonna fail, and they're all gonna laugh at you!"

This was different. For the first time, sitting in the coney island, I had the guts to tell my wife:

"I'm having a panic attack right now. It's been going on for about ten minutes."

Writing about past panic attacks is one thing. Telling anyone (even my wife) that I'm currently experiencing one is another. It's not something I do.

I grew up thinking that men aren't supposed to talk about emotional problems. Admitting that I was in a total state of freak out is a hard thing for me to do.

I'm plenty strong on the outside. I'm stronger than the average guy physically. But when I have a panic attack, emotionally, I feel like a small child. Fragile, easy to break. I want to run and hide from the world. I have to deal with being an adult with two children when I'd rather just curl up in the fetal position. Having a panic attack is hard. Having a panic attack when you have to adult with kids is the fucking worst.

My wife did her best to console me and take my mind off of things. She did a good job. She held my hand. She told jokes. We found other people in the restaurant to gossip about, whether it be good or bad. It took my mind off things for a while.

The thing about my panic attacks, is that they last for A VERY LONG TIME. I'm talking several hours at a time. When they happen, they come in waves. I go from slightly depressed to HOLY FUCKING SHIT DONALD TRUMP IS ABOUT TO PUT YOU INTO A REEDUCATION CAMP GRAB YOUR GUNS for at least six hours. So my wife consoling me helped to calm me down to at least keep me in the "slightly depressed" position for a while.

During those hours, I found myself entering a period of contemplation. I kept looking at what was causing me to have these panic attacks.

While I was having the panic attacks during my job training, I realized it happened mostly when my new employer was talking about all the ways they could fire me. They activated my fight or flight response. All the tales they were telling me about how tight a ship they were running, that response was activated, and I nearly sabotaged my new employment by telling them all that they should go and fuck themselves with a very sharp object before I walked out. I thought about getting out of the business of private security and finding some new job where I would be my own boss. Maybe mental health, as I love to study the subject, if only it's so I can figure out what the hell is wrong with me.

During this time, I had an epiphany. I realized what I really wanted.

Freedom.

Just fast-forward to the :30 mark.

There's many kinds of freedom that we have in the United States, but there's a type of freedom that's not guaranteed by our Constitution. I want economic freedom. I want the freedom to be able to pay my bills by just working my job without having to beg for overtime. I want the freedom from my job to be who I choose to be after hours. I want the freedom to not have to worry about money.

My new employer has said during my training that they won't offer this freedom, and that's why I've been having constant panic attacks this week. I've been freaking out over my lack of freedom to have a job that doesn't have an overbearing employer.

When I go to my new job site, maybe I'll find out that my employer isn't as overbearing as they made themselves during my off-site job training. It'll be good if that happens. I've worked under plenty of people in private security that were great bosses. They let you do your job and just left you alone. If you fucked up in some way, they'd defend you so you kept you job. I'd be fine working under someone like that if I made enough money to pay my bills.

If not, for the sake of my mental health, I'll have to look for a new line of work. All of these panic attacks are not worth the small amount of money I'll get to pay my bills (which, given my larger-than-before-promised-salary, still means I have to beg for overtime). If I have to choose between sanity and paying bills, I choose sanity. I choose mental freedom. I'll deal with paying the bills some other way.

In the meantime:

We Are Warriors, Tired Though We May Be

This is my post for Veterans Day.

Or as I've long known it as: Free food at Applebee's Day!

I joined the Army Reserves on my 21st birthday. 9/11 had happened just a few months prior, and I wanted sign up both to do my part, and also to protect one of my friends that was also in the Reserves (hi, Ger!)

I had planned on signing up the year prior, but they said I was too fat. I wanted to join because of the college money, but also because my heavy training in martial arts gave me the mind of a Samurai, and I wanted all the warrior training that Uncle Sam was willing to give me on the taxpayer's dime.

Still, I was too fat to join.

But after 9/11, they were willing to take just about anyone. So I went to the MEPS station, sucked in my gut, dipped my neck, and a month later I was at Fort Jackson.

I signed up to be a 71L, what was known then as an "Administrative Specialist". It's admittedly the most wimpy MOS (Army job) of all MOS's. "Administrative Specialist" is a fancy term for "file clerk".

But that was the only job I could take to be in the same military company as my friend, so I took it.

I ended up liking the job. With that job I took two overseas tours (including one in Iraq), that for the most part, had me working behind a computer with access to the internet. It's how I found my love for blogging.

There's a slang for people that do our job: Chairborne Ranger. I wore that label like a badge of pride. We were office workers, but we were also combat ready. I told people, "We are the toughest secretaries on the planet!"

Being an office drone for Uncle Sam didn't mean we were exempt from danger. In Iraq, we had attacks on our base from insurgents, and I nearly died the day after Christmas in 2005 from an IED during a convoy mission. Fortunately, it was found before it could blow anybody up.

I met some of the greatest people I will ever know during my time in the service. There's something about being in the military that connects you with those that also serve. There's very little that we found offensive in terms of humor (where else can you make jokes about kicking babies and everyone around you laughs?) and our personalities just clicked.

Then, we went home. We went back on Reserve status, and had to go back to civilian life.

Most of us didn't re-up. We had done enough time on behalf of Uncle Sam, and decided that our time was over.

Adjusting to civilian life has been hard for some of us, and not as hard for others. Some of my friends went on to have good careers, while many of us struggled to pay the bills.

I tell people about the military, "We had a bunch of problems, and none of them were about money. Now, we have 99 problems, and every one of them involve money."

The civilian world still doesn't make a lot of sense to me, even though I've been home for over a decade. In the military, no matter how bad it sucked, we always had each other to look out for one another. But in the civilian world, it seems like it's every man for themselves. You're on your own out here, whether you like it or not. It's a dog-eat-dog world, so they say.

Of all the problems with civilian life, that tops the list. Why are there so many people that just don't care about the well being of others? I just don't get it.

Now, most of us are married or divorced, and ended up with kids. We're in our 30s now, and even with the spirit of the warrior in us, we're tired.

Just after Basic Combat Training, I could get four hours of sleep and run two miles the next day. Now, I have to keep a strict diet and exercise regiment to have enough energy to be able to function.

I miss being that young warrior and having all that energy.

I also joined the Army while having General Anxiety Disorder, even though I didn't know I had it at the time. The military and the combat zone cranked that disorder up a few hundred notches. Living for a year in a desert everyday where you're not sure if the next day is even going to come will do that to you. It's why I struggle with alcohol and other drugs (mostly weed) to self-medicate. Some days, I'm still stuck in that desert, and I need to get wasted to come back home. It is what it is.

Despite being old and tired, there are days where I still know that the warrior spirit still dwells within me. A while back, I stood guard in another Army buddy's front yard because his neighbor was threatening to kill him (he lives in a fairly bad neighborhood). I had no problem putting my life on the line and being willing to bring all sorts of pain to anyone that dared cross us that evening. I've had people threaten me or my family in the real world and I dare them to come at me, refusing to back down to them, even when I know doing so might bring death. I switch from mild-mannered guy to war-ready psycho in a matter of seconds.

We vets are still warriors, tired though we may be. We are old, we are tired, and we have mental issues. But we are still fighters, and always will be.

If anyone feels like thanking a veteran today (or any day), do more than just use words. Write your congressman to tell them to do more to help with the clusterfuck that is the VA health care system. Tell them to have better mental health so that vets aren't stuck with some nurse that just pushes pills on them. Tell them to do something to deal with the veterans that are sleeping in the streets tonight. None of us ask for anything more than to be able to work for a living, to have enough money to provide for our families, and to be able to retain some degree of mental sanity. We did enough for you to have earned that much.

If anyone needs me, I'll be eating free steak at Applebee's.

Two Gym Fails, One Funny One

As promised, I made a video attempting my calculated one rep max on the squat, bench, and deadlift.

Enjoy!

Time to Start Cutting

A few weeks ago I decided to start reverse dieting. It wasn't done with the intention to gain weight, but I did need to work on getting more protein into my body. This is not an easy task when you've had bariatric surgery, even if it's been nearly three years later. I've been eating an insane amount of protein shakes and cottage cheese to get it done.

But after a week of that, I decided that after gaining weight for months, it's time to lose some body fat. I had my wife take a set of calipers to my chest, stomach, and thigh, and found that my body fat percentage is currently a little over 28%.

I want to get that down to less than 18%, and if my knowledge of basic math is sound, that means I need to lose about 30 pounds of body fat. Losing fat is easy. Doing it without losing muscle is hard.

Last week I created a calorie reduction meal plan with an emphasis on keeping my protein levels high, but I had to quit that because there's still some foods that my body can't tolerate. So now I'm just cutting out carbs.

Or rather, I planned on just cutting out carbs, but Halloween.

After raiding my kid's stash from a trunk or treat outing we had on Friday, that plan got shot to shit. So I'm restarting that plan today.

I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes back in 2008, and was only functionally cured of it after the surgery, so I've been pretty averse to eating sugary and starchy stuff for years. Low carb diets tend to be easier for me to follow (when we're not around holidays that are excuses to give free candy to children) as a result.

I'm also going to have to make damn well sure I get some cardio into my workout routines. I need to do that anyway. While I may be the stronger now than I've ever been in my life, I sacrificed a lot of endurance and speed to get that way.

So...thirty pounds to go.

A Review of Candito's Six Week Program, and Why I Love Exercise

I just completed week five of Candito's Six Week Strength Program this afternoon. Week six is a deload week, so I think it's safe to review the program now.

My review is this: It's awesome. It's just fucking awesome.

When I started the program, my five rep max on my squats was 205 pounds. It's now 230 pounds. My one rep max on the bench press was 205 pounds. I can now do at least four reps at that weight. My calculated 1 rep max on the deadlift is now 320 pounds, and I did four reps at 290 pounds today.

I'll be doing another review of the program in six weeks to see if I hit another plateau. The program is meant to prevent plateaus, but we'll see.

If you're beginning in weight training, I still recommend either the Stronglifts 5x5 method or the Starting Strength 3x5 method. Once you reach the limits of what those programs can provide for you, go on the Candito program. My previous plateaus are busted. In the case of my squats, what was once my limit on my weight is my warm-up weight now.

Today, I had to reluctantly drag my ass to the gym. I woke up tired, and stayed that way through most of the day. I knew I wasn't going to skip the gym because my workout was simple - one set of deadlifts - but I really wasn't in the mood.

When I got to the gym, I did my warmup sets, and nervously racked the barbell for my final set. I had never deadlifted 290 pounds before, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to do it. Still, I put myself into position, grabbed the barbell with an iron-tight grip, and lifted.

First rep up. "Well, that was easy enough."
Second rep up. My grip strength was barely enough to hold the barbell, but I completed it.
Third rep up. At this point, the lifting part itself is easy, but my grip was so loose that I was barely holding the barbell by the tips of my fingers.
Fourth rep up. Holy shit, I fucking did it.

After dropping the barbell, I had finished the week performing a new personal record on all of my major lifts. I went into the gym tired and reluctant, but after finishing that set, I was full of energy and had a shit-eating grin on my face.

I don't show strong emotion often. In public, I'm fairly stoic, holding a poker face and not letting too much of my thoughts show. But at that moment I had a smile a mile wide and I had to remind myself not to completely lose my shit and run around wild cheering in the gym. If I had no ability for self-restraint, I would have started doing a victory lap around the gym, my arms flailing in the air, screaming, "WHOOOOOOOOO! FUCK YEAH! I FUCKING DID IT!", ending my victory lap at my barbell and doing shadow boxing in my moment of celebration, while every person in the gym looked at me like I had lost my goddamn mind.

I talked about this a while back in my post called, "The Best Part About Exercise", but I'll repeat it now. I love fitness because it's the great equalizer. I don't believe in the positive thinking garbage about money or your economic situation. There's very, very few people that are living in poverty or struggling because they aren't working hard enough. If anything, most of us are working harder and working longer hours than generations before us. I'll even go so far as to say it's insulting to claim such things, as I have to beg my bosses for overtime just so I'll have enough money to pay my bills. I earned a college degree and an EMT license under the GI Bill and I'm still looking for a job where I can work an average 40 hour work week and not have to worry about getting my bills paid on time. The idea that you can change your economic situation through sheer force of will is a lie. If that could happen, I would have done it by now.

But in the gym, I am in control of my destiny. I have the ability to achieve greatness. I can choose to be the best person I can be. Fitness is the one thing that I can choose for myself without a greedy boss, a corrupt bank, or what is the myth of the "free market" holding me back. I may be broke, I may be struggling, but in the gym, I am a fucking god, standing by lesser beings that have just begun their path to fitness (and many that will quit within a few months), and greater gods that have spent their lives lifting more than I can; those greater gods, that I watch lift and know with confidence that one day, I will be stronger than them because I choose to drive on and not quit, but still look at with admiration. It's the time that I can live the lyrics from Spose (a singer which you may have noticed by now, I take a lot of inspiration from) and say confidently:

But I was supposed to curl up, I was supposed to back down
I was supposed to fade, evaporate into the background
I was supposed to never be nothing but made it to something
I knew I could do it, I will make it through it
I'll prove it, I was just another human who was supposed to be... 

Nobody 

That truly is the greatest thing about fitness. Control over our own bodies is the only real freedom that we have. It's with that, that the gym gives me real freedom.

Enjoy the song:

Thoughts on Getting Old

"Once scared of the banalities and annoyances that they believed defined adulthood, Everything Sucks is the Descendents realizing that their worst fears had come true. Growing old, they found, sucks. Judging by the songs, in fact, it’s safe to say that it’s even worse than they might have thought." - A.V. Club

 “I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” - Douglas Adams

"Don't trust anyone over 30." - Jack Weinberg

The other day a friend of mine on Facebook said that her teenage daughter had just turned old enough to get her own Facebook account. She didn't want it because it's for old people.

For a while I had known that at my thirty-five years of age, I was slipping away from youth culture. New music comes out and I don't get it. I listen to teenagers talk and I have to resist laughing at them as they try to sound like adults but completely lack the life experience to do so. They try to sound profound but just sound self-absorbed. I knew I was getting old.

But knowing that teenagers don't even want to be on Facebook nowadays was the realization that I'm not getting old. I am old.

Ugh.

I never wanted to get this old. When I was 14 I told my history teacher that my main goal in life was to make sure I died before I reached 30. He asked what I was going to do if I made it to one day before my 30th birthday. In my dark sense of humor, I told him, "Suicide by cop."

Bruce Lee was 32 when he died. Shortly before his death he expressed fears of getting older. Getting older meant that he'd be getting weaker. It would be harder for him to fight other men in their 20s that were up and coming in the martial arts world. I wish that were the half of it.

The physical part of getting old sucks. There is no doubt about that. My first day home after Initial Entry Training in the Army (when I was 22) had me hanging out with friends until four in the morning, getting four hours of sleep, and running two miles before doing it all over again the next day. I got less than 12 hours of sleep the first three days I was home and did a workout routine that would kill weaker men on a full night of sleep. I miss having that kind of crazy energy. Now, if I don't drink enough protein shakes and take vitamins, I'm a dead man walking. I didn't have calcium deposits in my shoulder back then, because shit like that doesn't happen when you're 22.

The physical part is only one part of it, though. The hardest part is the uncertainty that comes with knowing that the world is changing all around you and you aren't able to keep up with it. So kids don't want to do Facebook anymore. That's fine, but could someone PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK SNAPCHAT IS?! I have no idea what it is, nor do I know why I would need to use it. While I'm still up to date on most forms of technology, any bit of social media that isn't called Facebook is a complete mystery to me. The only other social media account I have is Twitter, and I don't even use it.

Then there's the financial aspect of it all. The odds of finding financial security get worse and worse every year. Am I going to spend the rest of my life in debt and working overtime to pay the bills, missing my daughters growing up in the process? Why can't I just get a 40 hour a week job with the weekends off that will take care of my financial needs? I'm not even asking to be rich, just middle class, and it seems like every year that's getting harder and harder to obtain and keep. It's beyond frustrating.

When you're a kid, other adults train you for adulthood (even if you don't listen to them). They tell you to go to college, get a good paying job, get a 401(k), and to save your money. What they never prepare you for is what comes after that. How do you deal with a world that's changing all around you too fast? How do you deal with having responsibility and loss of freedom that comes with having to take care of other people? What happens when your friends all get married and start having kids? What happens when you watch them getting divorced? What about when they start dying?

If I had to guess, the adults didn't have the answers to those questions because they were just starting to experience all that for themselves.

I was born in 1981. I'm the very last remnant of what's known as "Generation X". I lived most of my life well. I didn't become a teenage parent. I served my country when the nation ended up suffering the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. I have a college degree, although I got it much later than most. Yet here I am, getting older and constantly asking myself, "Where do we go from here?"

I honestly don't know. The only thing that's left now is uncertainty.

Reverse Dieting (When You Have no Stomach)

After I started the Candito program, I realized that I also need to eat more food. A lot more. Way more than I'm accustomed to or comfortable eating. This is especially true of protein.

So, last week I started trying to fit every piece of solid hunk of meat and dairy product into my mouth, but I got full very quickly. It's been nearly three years since I've had bariatric surgery, so I can eat an average size meal in one sitting, but eating all of this food was getting to be too much, so I had to start getting creative.

My previous nutrition goal was to eat at least 250 grams of protein a day. Now, I'm eating 300. I also have to consume some carbohydrates on days that I workout so I'm not sluggish when I hit the gym. This is what I eat to make sure that I get the calories I need to get stronger:

1. Protein shakes
2. Protein shakes
3. More protein shakes
4. Cottage cheese
5. Greek yogurt (the big containers of the plain stuff, not the sugar-stuffed bullshit that comes in one-cup portions)

Basically, if it's a liquid or a food with a paste-like consistency that contains protein, I'm eating it.

Carbs are easier to consume than proteins, but if I'm working out, I drink a couple bottles of Powerade throughout the day so I'll have the energy to lift.

I used to eat every three hours so I could fit in my macros. Those days are over. Now, I'm eating every time I can fit food into my tiny, tiny stomach.

Here's a video of Alan Thrall doing some extreme bulk dieting. You'll be both enthralled and disgusted at the same time:

Week One Finished!

Last week, I said that I was beginning a new workout program. Jonnie Candito's 6 Week Strength Program. And after one week, I can safely sum up how I'm feeling in this YouTube video:

While most workout routines go up in difficulty, this program is a bit different because the first two weeks deal with muscular hypertrophy. That means that the first two weeks have you lifting with lower weights and higher reps until your body is completely broken down. This is done to gain muscle mass, which as I mentioned in the last post, is needed to lift more weight.

You don't reach hypertrophy on a 5x5 program.

My leg muscles finally cracked under the pressure and I got a really painful muscle sprain in my inner thigh that kept me bedridden for most of yesterday. It was hurting so bad that I couldn't walk or bend my knees. I'm feeling better now that I spent a day icing the injury, dumping Ibuprofens down my throat, and making sure to keep my knee above my waist. I'm feeling much better today; however, today is also another leg day. If I don't feel at 100% by the time I get to the gym, I'll just work the upper body today and put off leg day until tomorrow.

Week two is supposed to be more brutal, at least as far as the legs go. If my legs are up for it, I'm supposed to squat 190 pounds 10 times, followed by 5x3 sets of 195 today.

With the upper body, ever since I started just going parallel with my arms on the bench press to avoid flaring up the calcium deposit in my shoulder, I'm getting much stronger very fast. I've also set a personal record on the dumbbell overhead press, finally breaking triple digits after lifting weights for years. So, I have that going for me.

If I manage to survive week two, it gets much easier. The last few weeks are high weights with low reps. So long as I warm up first, I won't walk away limping.

There's been a few other things that went on this week that I plan on writing about in separate posts, including changes in my diet and a post on aging.

Maxed Out

A few weeks ago I started doing Stronglifts 5x5 program again. After about a week of it I found that I was struggling to do both squats and barbell rows. Some days, I wouldn't be able to finish my sets at all. I wasn't quite sure what was going on, but I wasn't making much progress.

Sometime last week I was going through a bunch of Alan Thrall videos on YouTube and I found one where he was talking about Stronglifts and Starting Strength and he said that it's common for people on those programs to start struggling after about two to six months, because they're made for beginners (I never felt like a beginner, but after all my injuries, I was definitely lifting like one). Since you lift five pound more every workout than you did your last, eventually you will max out your lifts with these methods (Thrall did the math and found that if you added five pounds to your squat three days a week for a year, you'd end up squatting 780 pounds more than when you started).

I forgot which video he posted that mentioned it, but he was citing this report throughout the video, and it said that eventually, doing five reps isn't enough. You have to start building more muscle mass, and you do that by lifting with lower weight with higher reps (essentially, bodybuilding).

In the comment section, there were a bunch of comments praising the Candito Six Week Training Program for intermediate lifters, so I checked that out. It looks like a good enough plan, so I'll be starting it tomorrow.

The first two weeks are high rep, moderate weight routines. The next three are high weight, low rep routines. The last week is a deload week, where you find your new one rep max and do a mild version of week one. Then you start over with your new one rep max being the basis for all your lifts.

There's a lot of days where you're not working your legs on this plan, so hopefully I can start running again, too.

Now here's a picture of two bunnies kissing that I'm posting just so my Facebook post has more than a title:

Bench Pressing With Bad Shoulders

As I've mentioned many times, I have calcium deposits in my right shoulder. This means that doing the bench press puts me in a great deal of pain. A few months ago, when I started the Stronglifts routine, as long as I had perfect form there was no pain. After I started putting some heavier weight on the barbell, it doesn't matter how good my form is, I'm in a world of hurt.

Which is why I'm glad I found this video:

Physical therapist Jeff Cavaliere explains how to press without risking further injury to your shoulders. I've been using the first modified method and it's worked well for me. Enjoy!

This is Weird

A disclaimer: I do my best to avoid discussing politics on this blog, as I feel that health, fitness, and mental health should be non-partisan issues. I didn't do that this time around. If you don't agree with my politics (which you should know by my constant posts on Facebook), you might want to turn away.

It started back on Sunday night.

After I got out of work, I changed into a T-shirt and shorts and was playing with Hailey in her room with Lisa.

Last Christmas, I bought Hailey a toy punching bag. It's supposed to be the type that you fill up with water or sand at the bottom, and fill up with air at the top so when you hit it, it falls down and comes back up.

I used to have it filled with water, but it leaked, so now it's filled with nothing but air. As a result, when Hailey punches it, it goes all over the place, so she feels like The Incredible Hulk when she hits it.

Hailey was hitting it in her bedroom while Lisa and me watched. Because of the low weight that comes with a bag having no water or sand in it, she picked it up Hulk style and threw it at Lisa.

I'm sure that Hailey intended for my wife to catch it, but my wife was not ready for our kid to go all Hulk on the bag and toss it at her face. She did anyway.

After Hailey tossed the bag at her mom, we all watched as the bottom end of the toy punching bag hit my wife square in the face.

When it connected to Lisa's nose, I covered my face in shock. After that, something amazing happened.

My wife revealed that she wasn't injured. She was just in a sort of pain from being hit from a piece of plastic. After that, I began a kind of slow laugh. I kind of chuckled at first; then, I burst into full blown laughter.

Hailey saw me laughing my ass off, and she began laughing, too. That made me laugh even harder! Before you knew it, we were both in hysterics. With the exception of my wife (sorry babe, I love you!), who had left the room, my kid and I were insane with laughter!

I think it was at that point that some part in my brain either blew a fuse, or completely lit another one up. I'm not sure which.

The next day I was at work, just doing nothing, and I felt a weird sensation. I asked myself, "What the hell is going on?"

It was then that I realized:

Holy shit, I'm happy.

I haven't "felt happy" in years. I put that part in quotes to make the point that there aren't times in the past many years where I didn't feel happy. There were times when I heard a funny joke, or found that my kids were able to do something that made me proud, or some other point where there was some moment where I felt joy. I was happy in those brief, fleeting moments.

What I mean by "feeling happy", is that my "default setting", the time in our lives where we don't have any outside stimulation to direct our emotions, is for the first time in years, happy. It's not anger, fear, or any other negative emotion that has guided me for well over a decade. I'm just fucking happy.

When you've suffered from PTSD, depression, and anxiety for over a decade, this is a very weird feeling. I even tried to talk myself out of being happy, as crazy as that sounds.

A long time ago I heard a quote from Henry Rollins where he explained anger as being a form of awareness. He said that if you're angry, it's because you know that things are wrong, that you know that you live in a fucked up world and are aware of your situation. If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention.

That's why I started to try to talk myself out of being happy at first. I told myself, "You live in a world where you have to work longer hours to be able to pay the bills, there are cops in America that are getting away with murder while there are assholes murdering good cops. We live in a world where systemic racism exists, where there's some rich prick reality T.V. show star just a few votes away from the presidency who has ran a campaign on nothing but hate and evil, while you're still struggling to pay the bills every month. WHY IN THE FUCK ARE YOU SO HAPPY?!"

Every time I asked myself that question, a quote from a song by Spose (song shown below) kept screaming into my head:

Why am I so happy, I don't have to answer that. Why are you so miserable is the question that I need to ask.

 As the days passed and I kept that quote screaming in my brain, I came to a strong realization. I don't know if this general feeling of happiness is going to last. I hope that it does, but I've spent so many years being unhappy that I honestly don't know. What I do know is that for those of us that are unhappy for good reason (especially for the reasons listed above), we need to know that being happy is an act of fucking rebellion.

Yes, the world is a goddamn shit pile. We work harder than we should to be able to pay the bills. We see the systemic racism in our country and we have a strong enough sense of empathy to hate it. We are merely a few votes away from having a complete and total idiot running this country, and even if he loses, we'll still probably end up struggling to make a living.

Despite all that, we need to remember that we are human beings, goddamn it! Our lives have value, and we deserve to be happy! It's because of that, that being happy is an act of rebellion. The world wants us to be depressed, pissed off, and filled with despair because of all of the evil that exists in it.

It's because of that, that despite all the bullshit that's going on in the world, I choose to lift two big middle fingers up at it and scream:

FUCK YOU WORLD! I'M GOING TO BE HAPPY! YEAH, I'LL BE PISSED AT THE INJUSTICE OF THIS WORLD, BUT ONLY FOR A WHILE! IN BETWEEN THOSE MOMENTS, I'M GOING TO BE HAPPY JUST TO PISS YOU OFF! FUCK YOU, WORLD! I'M GOING TO BE HAPPY! IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, YOU CAN SUCK ON MY SALTY BALLS!

Suck my balls, world. I'm going to be happy just to piss you off.

Another Post About my Kids

I now know why my parents would get angry when I was a kid if I didn't like a certain food or didn't eat because I wasn't hungry. Over the past few months, I've learned to love cooking. If it's my day off, I'm making dinner. It went from being a once a week deal where I'd try a new dish to me completely taking over the kitchen every chance I get. My recipes are usually fairly elaborate deals that take at least one hour to make, if not longer.

So when Hailey, my oldest daughter, refuses to eat the food that I busted my ass making I get more than a little pissed off. Correction: She eats everything except the meat portion. I do my best to not show my anger, because I was a picky eater as a kid and still am to this day (I would rather be stabbed than eat something containing onions), and I know from personal experience that trying to pressure kids to eat something will only make them hate it all the more. But I was concerned with my kid's protein intake, so I came up with an idea to get her to eat.

"Hailey! Can you help daddy cook?!"

"Uhh...yes!"

Just like that, she was with me in the kitchen. We were having barbecued ribs for dinner, and I told her after the ribs go on the grill, I'm taking her to the store so we can get our side dishes.

I handed Hailey the dry rub and showed her how to put it on the ribs. She put them on exactly like I showed her. After putting the baby backs on the grill, we were off to Kroger to grab our side dishes.

"Hailey, what do you want to go with your ribs?"

"Uhh..."

"Do you want mashed potatoes?"

"Uhh...yes."

"Okay, we'll get mashed potatoes. Do you want green beans?"

"Uhh...yes."

"Okay. Do you want peas and carrots?"

"Daddy, I LOOOVE peas and carrots!"

"Okay, we'll get those, too."

We grabbed all the stuff and headed back to the house just in time for me to move the ribs around the grill. Fast forward one hour, and I'm showing her how to make instant mashed potatoes. I have her put the butter and the water into the pot, and once the pot was boiling, she (very carefully) poured in the milk. After that, I open up our two cans of veggies and she scoops out some butter to put into them before I put them in the microwave. After that, I took the ribs off the grill and showed her how to brush them with barbecue sauce. She does just fine with that. Her face was beaming with pride the entire time we were making the food, and I made sure to give her a high five every time she did something.

Dinner is ready!

I make up plates for the kids and I, and we all sit at the table. I had a single rib on Hailey's plate. I told her, "Eating ribs is like eating corn on the cob. You grab the bones like this, and you bite into it like this", all the while demonstrating how to eat them. This is the first time we didn't serve it to her chopped up into little pieces. She's going to eat like a big girl.

Laurel, my youngest, has never met a food she didn't like, so she gobbles it all up like it's nothing. Hailey, on the other hand, ate all of her sides and took one bite of the ribs. After that, she refused to eat another bite saying, "Daddy, I don't like it!"

In my head, I am Samuel Jackson. I am superfly TNT. I am the Guns of the Naverone, and I have HAD IT WITH THIS MOTHERFUCKING KID NOT EATING HER MOTHERFUCKING DINNER! However, I remain calm, as I just spent the last four hours bonding with my daughter and I don't want to ruin it by having a temper tantrum that will just cause her to dig in her heels and be more stubborn about eating. I took her plate and ate her rib.

If she just didn't like one kind of meat, I wouldn't care too much, but I was genuinely concerned that she might not be getting enough protein in her diet. She needs it to grow and to be strong. So, like with everything else in my life that I get flustered by, I hit up the internet for advice.

After googling, "My toddler won't eat meat", I was led to this website. It turns out that toddlers having a phase where they don't like to eat meat is common. Because meat can seem more bland than other foods, and is also harder to chew (even if it's slow-cooked, marinated pieces of pork dipped in delicious barbecue sauce), kids often go through a phase where they just don't want it. They suggested some ways of serving the food, as well as concentrating on the types of meat that your kid will eat (in Hailey's case, that would be chicken nuggets, hot dogs, and bologna).

I also learned from another article that kids don't need that much protein. Someone of Hailey's age and size only needs about 18 grams of protein a day to ensure proper growth. She gets plenty of that just from dairy. That calmed me down.

Besides, Hailey is a giant. She just turned four, but even at three years old, she was towering over kids twice her age. Like her daddy, she's a tall one. All signs point to her having her nutritional needs met.

I won't have any days off until Wednesday, but I think I'll serve fish sticks that day. Kids like fish sticks, right?

A Series of Hilarious and Epic Fails!

A few weeks ago, I said that I was going to start doing the Westside Method, along with running, so I could do both powerlifting and running at the same time.

The first workout had me doing box squats. After doing a few warmup sets, I set the bar at 225 pounds.

I had never squatted 225 pounds, but I was confident that I could do it, because:

A) I was only lifting one rep.

B) I'm starting out on a box, so it's only a half rep, anyway.

So, I put the bar on my back and sat down on the box. I positioned my feet.

"Okay. Ready to lift on 1...2...3."

As I moved up, my legs screamed out, "NOPE!", and I fell forward.

Fortunately, I had the sense to get down on my knees and push the weight off of my shoulders while I slid from under the bar. The bar landed with a loud clanging sound on the floor.

I looked up to see if anyone saw me. Fortunately, the only other person in the gym was a woman on a stairclimber on the other side of the gym. She didn't see shit.

Then, I looked to make sure the gym didn't have any security cameras pointed at me. Nope. Looks like I'm not going to be a viral video.

Thank God.

I looked at the bar lying on the ground, and I kicked myself for having this be THE ONE DAY that I forgot to set up the safety bars on the cage.

I did two things that day that I always tell others to avoid doing. I let my ego write a check my ass (and legs) couldn't cash, and I forgot to be safe. Thankfully, I didn't have much injury to little more than my ego.

As far as running and powerlifting go, using the Westside Method was a failure. The second leg workout just put too much stress on my legs, and I felt like Jell-O for the next couple of days.

With that workout being scrapped, I tried to split my lifting, so I'd only do squats and deadlifts one day a week, while I worked on my upper body four days out of the week. I would run three days a week.

That failed too, because everything I was doing was indirectly working my abdominal muscles, and I ended up with the same muscle strain that nearly took me out while I was training for my half marathon.

I might just have to accept that I'm getting older. When I was 21, I could have done all this stuff on three hours of sleep. Now, I have to keep a strict diet just to be able to have the energy to work out and recover.

So as of now, I'm not running. Tomorrow I will get back on the Stronglifts 5x5 routine. My new plan is to do that until I reach my lifting goals. After that, I'll start running again while keeping a very basic bodybuilding routine so I can keep my strength.

When you've had a series of epic fails on your fitness journey, it's important to remember that failure is all part of the process. I'm sure even The Rock has had bad days in the gym. I'm still in great shape, and I'll get to where I want to be eventually if I work at it.

Advice for Beginners - Part Two

About a month ago I wrote a post giving advice to people that want to start out being healthier. In the section on exercise, I said to make it a point to do some sort of physical activity for an hour a day, five days a week. You didn't necessarily have to join a gym, start lifting weights, or running (unless you wanted to), but just find something that keeps you physically active for an hour. I made it a point to say that you shouldn't have a specific goal in mind, because goals come later.

Well, later has come. After spending a month being active, you probably found something that you enjoy doing. Now that you've reached that point, it's time to start focusing on goals.

Goals are what keep us motivated to exercise. If I hadn't decided to run a half-marathon back in 2014, I wouldn't have ran five days a week, often for several miles at a time. It's a rare person that would decide to run nine miles for no reason. It was the race that kept me motivated.

So, whatever you decided to start doing, set a goal and work to achieve it. If you decided to start walking, you might consider walking a half-marathon. If you decided to start lifting weights, set a goal for how much you want to be able to lift. So on and so forth.

Make sure you have a short term goal and a long term goal. I did a series of small races before running a half-marathon, starting with a race that was just short of a mile. I moved up to a 5k, then a 10k, and a 10 mile race. Each race was a short term goal that eventually led to reaching my long term goal of running 13.1 miles.

My short term goals have changed quite a bit since then. Currently, my short term goals are to be able to squat and deadlift 350 pounds in a five-rep set, and to bench 250. I also want to run three miles in under 24 minutes.

My long term goal is to be able to do the Jason Statham Workout.

Don't be frustrated if you don't meet all of your goals, either. At the very least, you'll be in better shape than when you started.

Conversations Around a Dead Body

I meant to write this last week, but of course life got in the way.

Just before I entered high school, three friends found themselves through a love of punk rock. They called themselves the Moron Brothers, despite the song of the same name being the exact opposite of who they were. They weren't idiots, or losers, or scum. They weren't taking advantage of anyone. Yet, the song was funny enough for them to give themselves the name anyway.

When I entered my sophomore year of high school, I became the fourth member of the Moron Brotherhood. I was adopted into the group that made up of Chris, Mike, and Ger(ald).

We had other friends during our time in high school, but of the Moron Brothers, we were the core group. After high school, we did our best to stay together, even though some of us moved far away. Despite meeting nearly two decades ago, we made it a point to all get together when we were all in town, so we could catch up and talk about the good and bad times that had passed.

A little more than two weeks ago, I got a call from Ger. He told me that Chris had passed away.

No one knows how he died. The only information that Ger had to give was that his kids found his body on the couch in the living room. Nobody knew anything else.

Chris had a myriad of health problems, both mental and physical, so as of now, we still don't know how he died. Was it a suicide? We don't know. Was it a heart attack at his incredibly young age? We don't know. Was it a drug overdose? We don't know. As it stands, we still don't fucking know.

I went to Chris' viewing with Mike and a few other friends from high school. When Mike asked his family about his death, they said they were waiting on a toxicology report, and it wouldn't be provided for a few weeks. We still don't know how he died.

During the viewing, I talked with Mike and a few others from high school. We were still in a relative state of denial. The funeral home had a slideshow on their television where they showed a whole bunch of pictures of Chris from the time he was a child to their most recent photo. We had a good laugh at his pictures, especially the ones from our high school days. I made it a point of taking a shot on my phone of this one:

Chris is the one on the left, in what is most likely the most 90s picture of the entire 1990s.

Eventually, my friends and I managed to find our way to his corpse in the casket. His body looked like the makeup guy at the funeral home went to town on him and added way too much makeup. His body looked like it had much more melanin in it than his real body had when he was alive. It was as if it was a fake version of his body was lying in the casket. I wanted to touch his face to make sure it wasn't some mannequin lying in the casket, and I'm fairly sure at least some of my friends wanted to do the same, but we knew better than to do such things. Even if his skin looked like it had spent too much time in Florida on spring break, it was still him all the same.

While we were surrounding his body, Mike kept talking about he was once some happy-go-lucky kid that was always up for anything. I think he was trying to romanticize Chris' life. I met Chris just after he nearly killed himself over an ex-girlfriend. He was never a happy-go-lucky kid to me. He was just an idiot with mental issues.

I told Mike and the others in our party, "I keep trying to remember a good memory of Chris, but honestly, I can't remember any time when he was with us that he wasn't a fucking idiot...goddamn it, he was a jackass, but he was our jackass." Mike agreed with that assessment.

That probably sums up Chris' life, or at least what I remember of it. In high school, he loved to brag about how much he masturbated (during that time in high school when bragging about such things was both funny and taboo at the same time). He would attempt to bed the Christian girls that he dated by becoming engaged to them (in high school, an engagement usually means nothing, and he knew that). In adulthood, he joined the Army Reserves as a Petroleum Supply Specialist and did his time in the sandbox without Ger or me (who also did our own time in different Army companies). He married too young, had kids too young, and kept figuring out his own life as he went along without much regard for what he did next.

Chris was a jackass, but he was our jackass. I really can't emphasize that last part enough. He was our jackass; the one crazy friend that everyone has in their group. The friend that you always tried to convince to not do some stupid shit, but did anyway, and ended up with some funny stories as a result.

During adulthood, Chris had many jobs in his adult life that took its toll on his body. After the military, he ended up being a paramedic (and convinced me to get my EMT license because of it). After lifting bodies onto stretchers ruined his back, he did his best to get a job with one of the auto plants around here. Last we all knew, he became a Realtor, and kept hounding us to give up our personal information so he could put us on an email list to impress his boss. He was struggling to get his life together up until the very end.

That was a week before he died.

We still don't know how he died. Of all the things that suck about his death, that tops the list. I'd at least like to know that he didn't take his own life. In the darkest parts of my mind, I need to know that his death wasn't self-inflicted. Yet, as of this writing, we don't know what happened.

If there's one thing I can give advice on concerning his death, it's that life is too fucking short, and you need to spend it with the people you love. Enjoy your life while you have it with people that care about you. The Moron Brothers spent way too much time apart despite our love for one another, and it took a tragedy to bring us together again. Make it a point to spend time with your friends, your family, and those that you love. The moment that you spend with them might be your last.

Anyway, as I stood around Chris' body with my friends, we all took a good, hard look at his body as it lay in the casket. I said to the group:

"Chris was such a prankster, that I keep thinking that he's going to pop out of the casket any second now and scream, 'SURPRISE, BITCHES!'"

It's something that Chris would have done. The asshole would have faked his own death just to pull a prank.

I really wish he had done that.

He didn't.

Here's to you, Chris:

Back to the Lab Again!

I'm definitely showing my age with that title, huh?

On Tuesday, it was my day to run. Just a simple 30 minute run on the treadmill at a 12:00 pace.

At around the 20 minute mark, I quit. It was the second time in a row I wasn't able to finish my run. After that, I decided that I needed to hit the road for my next few run sessions, so on Thursday I began what was supposed to be a three mile run at my own slow pace.

I made it a half mile before I quit. My legs felt like lead.

There was a time that I would have beaten myself up for this. Not this time.

Mixing powerlifting and running is difficult. Very difficult. I still want to do both because I enjoy running and lifting heavy. If you do a Google search for "Powerlifting and running workout", you'll find only a few routines, but a whole lot of forums where people are asking how they can combine the two. There's no point in beating myself up for not accomplishing a task that leaves little room for error. Instead of kicking my ass about it, I decided to figure out how I can unfuck my situation. To the interwebs!

I decided to ditch my workout routine right off the bat. With my deadlift days and my squat days, I'm still lifting heavy with my legs twice a week. That's why my legs are lead. I found a workout routine that looks like it'll kick my ass up and down the block at first, but hopefully I can adapt to after a few weeks.

Part of the routine is here (my routine is listed under the 5k method), with the exercises listed here. It's completely different from anything I've ever done. I've never heard of the Westside Method before this. You do leg day twice a week, but you're only doing heavy lifting on one of them. You also do sprints on that day. The creator of the routine said that you do that because both heavy lifting and sprints wreck your legs, so it's best to spend one day a week wrecking your legs instead of two. It sounds logical, but I'm not looking forward to the nightmare that I'm going to unleash on my lower body come Wednesday.

Along with this routine, I still need to do my shoulder routine to deal with the calcium deposits that are still in my right shoulder, and I also have a routine to fix my grip strength. I needed to add the latter routine because I'm losing my grip on my deadlifts now that I've put some serious weight on them. So all in all, I'm going to be one busy man at the gym.

Another thing I need to change is my diet. I need to eat more. That's a first.

Carb cycling is a great way to lose body fat, and it works well when I'm strictly lifting, but I need more carbs if I'm going to run. This isn't an easy task for me, as I rarely eat all of the food on my high carb days as it is. Even with half my food in liquid form, it's difficult for me to eat everything.

According to Calorie Calculator, I will still be running up a calorie deficit if I eat 3,100 calories a day. I still have about 20 pounds of body fat to spare, so I can make that work, but I need to completely recalibrate my diet plan. My food is already prepped for this week, so I'll have to wait until next week before I make major changes. Until then, I'm just going to supplement my no carb days and low carb days with as many sports drinks and starch as I can handle.

You know you've come a long way on your fitness journey when you used to eat too much, and now you're not eating enough.

If this plan doesn't work, I'm going to have to ditch powerlifting and find some other form of strength training that can work with running. I hope it doesn't come to that, because I really like powerlifting.

I like how I'm handling this situation, though. It was only a few months ago where I would beat myself up if I couldn't finish a workout. Instead of doing that, I decided to figure out how to solve my problem. That's something I need to start doing with everything in my life.

Advice for Beginners

After I wrote my last entry, a friend on Facebook said that I was an inspiration. That was a bit surprising. I didn't think a formerly obese guy that's been seeing positive results in the gym as of late would be an inspiration to anyone.

Other people see it differently though, so it's for that reason I decided to write a post giving advice to people that want to begin to be more healthy and/or athletic. Keep in mind that this is all coming from a layman, and my advice is only for the able-bodied. Giving advice to people that aren't perfectly capable of doing anything resembling a normal exercise routine is way out of my pay grade, so if you're disabled or have a condition that prevents you from doing most forms of exercise, talk to your doctor about what you can do.

1. Weight loss:

This is called My Gastric Surgery Blog for a reason. I wouldn't be as athletic or fit today if I didn't have a surgeon rip out 3/4 of my stomach nearly three years ago. If you're obese, getting bariatric surgery is, scientifically speaking, likely the only way you're going to lose weight and keep it off. That's the harsh reality. If you're obese, you probably know this already, as you've likely attempted dozens of times to lose the weight and failed. It's to be expected, because as I said a few blog posts ago, our bodies are designed to fight starvation, not obesity. Our bodies want to keep the fat on us because they're still prepping for the day when we end up in a Mad Max dystopia, having to travel hundreds of miles on foot to get our dinner. Your body isn't giving up that fat without a fight, and it's about damn near impossible to win that fight without surgical intervention.

Or, having to live in a post-nuclear war dystopia.

The good news is that most insurance plans cover bariatric surgery nowadays if you have either a) a BMI of >40, or b) A BMI of >35 and a health disorder as a result of obesity. Even public health plans like Medicaid cover it. If your plan doesn't currently cover bariatric surgery and you really want to quit being obese, enroll in one of the health exchanges at the end of the year and get a plan with as low a deductible as you can afford. Last I checked (which means, check again for yourself), all of the plans on the federal health exchange from bronze level on up cover the surgery.

If you're not obese, but you want to lose a few pounds, that can be done easily by exercising more and reducing your caloric intake. After I was able to eat nearly an entire plate of food in one sitting after the surgery, I used the Paleo Diet to lose weight. I'm doing carb cycling now to increase my athletic ability. I did a severe calorie restriction diet last year when I was in danger of being over 300 pounds again. If you're not trying to lose more than 10% of your body fat, you're likely to find a diet that works for you.


2. Exercise:

I'm not going to give anyone advice on what workout plan to use, or even to have a workout plan to start. People have different fitness goals, and you're going to have to decide what yours are. Nerd Fitness has a good article where they break down fitness goals based on RPG character archetypes, but you might not even know where you would be on that list yet. It's not important to know what to do when you're just starting out. What's important is that you do something.

Make it a point to exercise for one hour a day, five days a week. Pick your time in advance and make sure that you stick to it. Don't worry about what you're going to do at first. Don't even have a goal in mind when you start, other than to use that one hour to do some sort of physical activity. You'll decide what your goal is later.


After having bariatric surgery and being cleared for physical activity, I didn't decide right away to run a half-marathon. I just started running and did a basic bodybuilding routine, and I decided that I liked running so much that I decided to train myself to run 13.1 miles. The goal of running a half-marathon only came after I started running and found out that I enjoy it.

So it will go with you. You don't even have to lift weights or do a cardio routine (unless you want to). Just make sure that you're active. Maybe there's a sport that you did in high school that you enjoyed. Start doing that again. Play Pokemon GO. Take a MMA class. Do something! Your other goals will come later.

Make sure you avoid biting off more than you can chew, too. My ego has caused me to receive a lot of injuries over the past few years that could have been avoided if I had accepted that fact that my body is no longer 19 years old. Your workout should be challenging, but not so much that it leaves you injured. If you think you might hurt yourself, check your fucking ego and just accept that you're not strong enough to finish-yet. Your time will come.

You're going to have to remember a hard truth as you do this, too: Sport is selfish. When you make time to exercise, you're going to have to abandon your other responsibilities for a short time. This is one of my biggest difficulties in fitness, as I have two small children at home. Hopefully your family will be as understanding about your desire to be more healthy as mine is (seriously fam, thanks for putting up with all my exercise, meal prep, high carb/low carb/no carb days, and all the other stuff that I do; this would be so much harder without your support). If they're not, explain that you're doing all this because you a) Want to live to see your kids graduate high school, and b) Want your kids to be healthy as well. Your kids learn your habits, so make sure that they're healthy ones.

If the people in your life won't support you after explaining the benefits of being healthier, you may want to rethink whether or not they should be in your life.

3. Food!

This is a different section than weight loss because healthy eating is about more than just weight loss. You need to eat well to have the energy to be active.

I started meal prepping a few months ago, which is when you make several days worth of healthy meals in advance so you can eat while at work or on the go. It makes it easier to keep track of the macronutrients you consume, and also keeps you from ordering food from some crappy ass fast food joint or restaurant. If you google "healthy meal prep", you'll find a whole bunch of healthy food recipes. My favorite site for meal prep recipes is Fit Men Cook, but there's a bunch of others as well. YouTube has no shortage of videos, too.

A positive side effect of doing all this meal prep is that I've been forced to learn how to cook. I think one of the reasons why I was obese was that I just never learned to cook my own food. For most of my adult life if I wanted to eat, I had three options:

A) My very limited knowledge of dinner recipes, which mainly consisted of burgers, hot dogs, and grilled cheese.

B) Frozen and/or prepackaged food.

C) Ordering out.

None of these are healthy options, and not knowing how to make a nutritious meal was a major reason why I got fat in the first place.

Learning how to cook has also given me an appreciation for food that I never had before. Even my cheat days have been more enjoyable than they have been in the past, simply because I'm learning to make some really great tasting (yet unhealthy) food. There's a certain pride that comes with being able to make a tasty meal that you don't feel when you order out or get a pack of frozen food from a store.

For example, yesterday was my cheat day, so I made baby back ribs on the grill for the first time in my life. Did you know that barbecuing ribs is practically its own science? Neither did I, until I had to learn how to make them. Tear off the membrane. Place them in marinade for several hours. Make sure the coals on your grill are only on one side so your ribs cook on indirect heat. Figure out how to keep the coals from burning out (thanks for the help on that, mom!) Brush the ribs with sauce every hour, and cook for two and a half hours. Give it one last brush of sauce after you take them off the grill. Let them cool for fifteen minutes before serving. It's practically a part-time job.

A part-time job with one hell of a payout!

Tell me you don't get hungry looking at this. I dare you.

When you combine the time I took to marinade and cook those delicious pieces of pig meat, I spent nearly nine hours working on them. Worth it!

I don't care how good the ribs are at your favorite spot, nothing compares to putting in the work of making your own and fucking nailing it! Now I know how Michelangelo felt when he painted the Sistine Chapel.

Did I just compare my ribs to some of the best known renaissance art? You're goddamn right I did! You don't think it's a fair comparison? Well, I dare you to come to my house the next time I barbecue up a rack of baby backs! Cooking is an art, and I AM A MOTHERFUCKING ARTIST!

But enough about my awesome cooking. This is about giving you advice.

Maybe you're already an experienced cook and you already take great pride in your work, but you just want to be healthier or learn new recipes. All the more reason to learn how to meal prep and research recipes on the internet. Over the past few months I've learned how to make lasagna using super-lean ground turkey and zucchini for noodles that tastes every bit as good as your standard lasagna recipe. I've learned how to make a delicious low calorie chicken and rice recipe using a slow cooker. I can make a healthy version of shepherd's pie that is heavy on vegetables and lacks none of the flavor. You can make food that's both healthy and delicious at the same time.

Believe me, you'll need to know these things when you're on your fitness journey. You can get away with eating junk when you start, but when your workouts get tougher, junk food isn't going to cut it.

4. Water:

Nothing much to say here. Just drink a lot of it. At least a half gallon a day. Avoid sugary shit (that includes sports drinks) unless you're on a high-carb day and you need it to get your macros.

Epic Win

I stopped doing the Stronglifts 5x5 routine this week. As a strength routine, I've found that it's second to none compared to every other weightlifting routine I've ever done; however, it's also the reason why I'm running at the pace of a snail. The man that created the workout admitted that you will not be able to run and do this program at the same time. Squatting heavy three times a week tends to make you slow.

With that in mind, I began searching for powerlifting programs that also allow for running. I found this workout and decided to give it a go. It separates the lift days so you're only squatting once a week, and has accessory exercises added on to make sure your muscles don't atrophy. The only thing I'm doing differently is adding an overhead press exercise on my squat day because I really enjoy that exercise and don't want to stop doing it (something about lifting over 100 pounds above your head gives you a sense of pride).

Wednesday was deadlift day. A few warmup sets of deadlifts, followed by a single 3-5 rep set of your maximum weight. I did two warmup sets of 135 and 185 pounds before completing my goal of 215 pounds, which is the most I've ever lifted of any exercise at all. I decided to try 225 for shits and giggles, but failed. That'll have to wait until next week.

I was mad that I failed in my 225 lift, but I realized that I should be cool with it because a) My goal was 215 and I succeeded, and b) I probably would have lifted 225 if I hadn't just done three sets of deadlifts already.

After that came the accessory exercises. Three sets of 8-10 reps of hanging leg raises, the stiff-legged deadlift, and calf raises. I did my first two exercises easily and went onto the calf raises.

I was a guest at a gym near my mother-in-law's house, and they do not have a calf raise machine. When that happens, you have to use the leg press machine to work your calves.

Like this.

I haven't used the leg press machine (or any machine for that matter) in months, so I decided to put the weight at 310 pounds to see how it would feel. I did three reps before stopping because the weight was so light that it felt like I was just standing on my tip toes. I set the machine to 370 pounds and got the same result. The machine maxed out at 415 pounds, so that was where I set the weight.

About eight months ago I used that machine for leg day and I lifted 250 pounds for 10 reps. I couldn't lift any more than that. On Wednesday, I had to do a single leg press at 415 pounds to get into position for the calf raise, and it was easy. The calf raises were even easier. If I could have added more weight, I would have.

It was then that I realized that I am stronger now than I have ever been in my life. Even stronger than when I was in my twenties.

I've been meal prepping for a few months now, carb cycling for close to a month, and doing the 5x5 program for the past several months, all in the pursuit of achieving athletic excellence. I've written posts complaining about doing it and being tempted to quit because I wasn't noticing my progress. But when I realized that this is the strongest I've ever been in my life, it was an epic fucking win.

And I'm only going to keep getting stronger. I'm not done training yet, not by damn sight!

Back in November, I wrote a post called, "My Weight Loss Journey Has Ended". That's still true, even after all the weight I've gained over the past few months. Mark Rippletoe warned that the Starting Strength method would cause you to gain weight because you'd be gaining large amounts of muscle over a short amount of time, and that you'd be needing to take in large amounts of healthy calories to do the workouts. The bodybuilding world calls this "bulking", and it's the reason why Hafþór Júlíus "Thor" Björnsson, aka, "The Mountain" isn't sporting a set of six pack abs.

Anyone want to call him fat? Anyone?


So when I stepped on the scale a month ago and found that I weighed 293 pounds, instead of panicking and going over to Medical Weight Loss Clinic like I did last time, I pretty much just shrugged. I knew it was mostly muscle mass that I gained. Unlike last time, my family didn't even notice that I had gained weight.

Just as a point of reference, here's me posting a selfie of myself, proud that my weight was down to under 260 pounds:

Here's me at 290 pounds, as of this morning:

My eyes are open! I promise!


My stomach is a little bit wider, but so are my arms, chest, and shoulders.

I just noticed my skin has bounced back too, as I'm no longer sporting some sagging A cups. :D

I'm very happy with how my body looks. Continuing to diet and exercise has nothing to do with body image or liking what I see in the mirror. I already do. This is all about gaining athletic prowess.

I will become better than I was before. Better, stronger, faster.

The gym will rebuild me.

They have the technology.

After a Bad Day at the Gym

Two weeks ago I woke up at 5:15 in the morning and drove my sleepy ass to the gym to get my workout in before I go to work. I had six hours sleep the night before, but it felt like half that.

I did a few brief exercises and warmups before doing the overhead press. I finished one set, and got ready to do my second. The barbell didn't move from my shoulders. My arms just seized up and just said, "LOL, nope!"

I left the gym disappointed in my failure. I kept trying to reassure myself, saying that we all have bad days at the gym, and it's not a big deal. It didn't work. I was pissed.

About an hour into my shift at work I became so frustrated that I just wondered if I should give up completely. "What's the point of all this? I'm going to have to do this as long as I live. Why not just quit, get fat again, and die?"

I hate that being in good shape takes so much work. It's even more frustrating when I have to constantly stop training because of an injury. Months of hard work gets pissed down the drain while I recover. Since having bariatric surgery, I've had injured knees, an injured shoulder, and an injured abdomen. My shoulder still has calcium deposits on it, and I have to lift through the pain.

Meal prep is a pain in the ass, too. It takes hours out of my day to cook them (one day a week, but a long day nonetheless), and constantly looking for recipes that both meet my macro requirements and taste good is a chore. It would be so much easier to just go to Wendy's and order a giant burger and fries.

For the first time in human history, we have to work to not get fat, as opposed to work to not starve, and our bodies haven't yet evolved to deal with that reality. It sucks.

It would be so much easier to quit.

While I was contemplating all of that, I asked myself why I've been at it for so long in the first place. It's been nearly three years since I had the surgery, and I've been working my ass off to get stronger, faster, and better ever since. I remembered this quote from The Oatmeal:

"I often regard overeating as a drug addiction, and I try to imagine what my life would be like if that addiction got the best of me. I picture the years wearing on, with Earth's annual trip around the sun being marked by an increase in pant sizes and a decrease in self worth. I imagine my heart getting tighter and more flustered, until one sunny morning it shudders to a violent halt. I imagine myself wrenching forward, my face heaving into a pile of waffles. I imagine my last breath gurgling into a tepid pool of maple syrup.
I imagine all these things, and I think: 

I don't want to die face first in a pile of waffles. 

I want to die in an electrical storm.
I want to die wrestling a Kodiak bear.
I want to die in an EXPLOSION.
I want to die quietly at home, hand in hand with somebody who loved me. 

I just don't want to die by waffles. Anything but waffles."

Anything but waffles. That's why I keep doing it.

The other reason is the thing that I've long realized since I was a child:

People are coming to hurt you, and nobody is coming to help you. Get training, motherfucker.

 If the desire to not die by waffles isn't enough, the need to be able to defend myself is.

Fuck it. Let's hit the gym!